Having spent my annual week last week with my fellow members of the NIV-TNIV Committee on Bible Translation, sifting through large stacks of proposals for minor tweaking of how we translate this or that word or phrase in anything from Genesis to Revelation, I’m in the mood for writing a blog on translating Scripture. A series of conversations in recent months, linked only by the theme of Bible translation, has made me dramatically more aware than ever before of the following observations:
1) Many people, unchurched and churched alike, have never actually looked in any detail at multiple Bible translations and therefore don’t have a good feel for just how different and similar they are. As a result, they tend to think they are actually far more different than they really are, leading to strange questions like, “With so many different English translations, how do we know which one or ones, if any, we can trust.” The short and most basic answer is, except for those produced by unorthodox sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation or Joseph Smith’s personal Joseph Smith Translation, or those deliberately designed to be a paraphrase and not a bona fide translation at all (like The Message or the old Living Bible Paraphrased), you can trust ALL of them. Not one will ever flawlessly come up with the very best rendering in every passage, but not one will ever lead you astray on any important matter of faith and practice. Do yourself the favor of getting the software that allows you to compare a couple dozen major English translations for a representative cross-section of Bible verses or passages of your choice and prove it to yourself!
2) Because of the passion with which some scholars and church leaders have advocated one of the bona fide translations above others or criticized one or more of those translations, way too many people both inside and outside of the church have the misimpression that you can’t trust all of them the way point 1) above phrases it. It’s time for those scholars and church leaders to come clean and correct these misimpressions. With the wealth and luxury of so many options in the English-speaking world, it’s time to put a lot less money and effort into internecine argumentation and a lot more into letting the world know the magnificent wonders of this collection of books we call the Bible, regardless of what translation one prefers!
3) We must help our people, and others, understand the difference between formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence, and mediating approaches. To oversimplify but to make the point, the more literal the translation is, the harder it will be for the general population at large to understand it. The more readable for one particular subculture the translation, the less literal it will be. It is simply inaccurate and thus irresponsible to say that the more literal a translation, the better, for all situations. The most literal translation of all is an interlinear, which is indecipherable to most people. The most readable, understandable and accurate, all in one package, will always be those translations that do not consistently aim for either formal equivalence (word-for-word renderings) or dynamic equivalence (thought-for-thought), but aim at a middle ground between the two—as literal as possible while still being as fluent and understandable by the greatest number of people as possible.
4) In light of this last point, and completely apart from debates about inclusive language, the tradition of translating represented by the NIV-TNIV continues to achieve this balance most consistently. The next best options aren’t even close.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Dr. Blomberg always makes me Think
Why? or Why not?
Retired BWA leader Lotz receives freedom award from Adventists 
By ABP staff Tuesday, June 23, 2009
BWA General Secretary Emeritus Denton Lotz (R) receives the ward from John Graz, secretary general of the International Religious Liberty Association. (BWA photo)WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Retired Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Denton Lotz has been honored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and affiliated religious-liberty organizations for his contributions to furthering global religious freedom.
He received the International Award for Religious Liberty June 18 at a dinner in Washington. The dinner and award are co-sponsored by the Adventists in conjunction with their religious-freedom publication, Liberty magazine, and the International Religious Liberty Association. Lotz is currently president of the association, which was founded by Adventists in 1893 but is non-sectarian and open to all supporters of church-state separation and religious freedom.
Lotz, who was named BWA’s general secretary emeritus upon his retirement in 2007, was awarded for making “religious freedom a major focus of his ministry as church leader and church statesman," according to a BWA press release.
In his response, Lotz said the award was recognition of the role that Baptists have played in the defense of religious liberty since the founding of the Baptist movement 400 years ago, in 1609. Baptists, he said, were often persecuted because of their anti-establishment stance and their defense of the liberty of conscience.
“Baptists were a persecuted group,” he told the roughly 300 guests gathered in the ballroom of the Capital Hilton hotel. “We believe that where religious freedom is denied, all other freedoms are denied.”
Keynote speaker for the dinner was Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), an ordained United Methodist minister who, prior to being elected to Congress, served as the first African-American mayor of Kansas City, Mo. “Everyone has the right to
freedom of thought, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, yet persecutions and atrocities are still taking place,” he said, according to the Adventist News Network.
Cleaver underscored the fact that, more than 60 years after the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, hundreds of millions of people around the world continue to be mistreated because of their faith.
“The choice to privately or publicly practice a religious belief or the choice to abstain from a religious belief or the choice to change one's own religious beliefs is unmistakably fundamental to human rights,” he said.
The Bentz Family to Lesotho
Mark and Linda Bentz and family from Milton, Wisconsin, are preparing to serve as missionaries in Lesotho, Africa. They were mentioned in the April 2009 Sabbath Recorder, and will again be featured in the upcoming July-August issue.These are precious Seventh Day Baptists who are leaving the comfort of home and extended family to serve the Lord with African Inland Missions. They plan to spend the next two-and-a-half years teaching, assisting in childbirth, leading Bible Studies, witnessing and caring for the people of Lesotho which lies wholly within the larger Republic of South Africa. They still need support.
You may send your checks to Africa Inland Mission, PO Box 178, Pearl River NY 10965. If you’d like to contact and encourage the Bentz family, write to mbentz@aimint.net.
Also, you can check out the following blurb about the Bentzes at the Africa Inland Mission website.